Labour can’t win if it’s on Mick Philpott’s side

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The voters have decided that we spend too much on welfare. Miliband must offer them more than silence in reply

Labour might easily lose, in 2015, an election it really ought to win and the reason will be that it didn’t understand what voters told it in 2010. When people were asked for an image to encapsulate the Labour Party, they told focus groups they imagined a man lying lazily on a sofa. That is a disaster for a party called Labour. There’s meant to be a clue in the name.

This week the tanker of politics started to turn. The benefit cap — which limits welfare payments so that no family can receive more than average after-tax household earnings — was